This is a tool for interacting with Banner, the registration system used by Memorial University. It suffers so that you don't have to.
The simplest way to use class is to run it directly from a source checkout.
After installing a few Python dependencies:
$ pip install humanize inflect mechanicalsoup passlib peewee xkcdpassclone this repository and test that you can run the class command:
$ ./class --helpThe command-line class tool uses a subcommand style of interaction:
usage: class [-h] [--db DB] {init,banner,parse,list,group,mail,plot} ...
positional arguments:
{init,banner,parse,list,group,mail,plot}
init initialize class database
banner interact directly with Banner
parse parse Banner HTML
list list students in the course
group group students together (e.g., for labs)
mail send email to class
plot plot statistics
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--db DB database URL
You will want to start with class init in order to create an empty class
database file, followed by some Banner comands.
The banner subcommand directly interacts with the online Banner system.
It can be used to look up course IDs (banner crn) or to fetch
class lists and save the resulting student data into the local database
(banner fetch).
$ class banner crn ENGI 3891
Found one course section:
201601 41327: ENGI 3891-001 95/100 registered ( 5 remaining)
$ class banner --term 201601 classlist 41327
Foundations of Programming - ENGI 3891 001
Sep 07, 2016 - Dec 16, 2016
95 students
95 existing students, 0 new:
$ class banner transcript --all
201600001 Alice B Cool 11 courses
[...]
It is helpful to create a file called credentials.yaml with your
username and password:
$ touch credentials.yaml
$ chmod 600 credentials.yaml
$ echo << EOF > credentials
username: your_user_name
password: your_password
EOF
$ chmod 400 credentials.yamlThe parse subcommands can be used to parse an already-downloaded
class list or transcript HTML file:
$ class parse transcript ~/Downloads/transcript.html
Parsed transcript for Alice B Cool:
ENGL 1080 Critical Reading&Writing; I 99
MATH 1000 Calculus I 99
MATH 1001 Calculus II 79
MATH 2050 Linear Algebra I 99
ENGI 1010 Engineering Statics 99
CHEM 1050 General Chemistry I 99
PHYS 1050 Gen Phys I:Mechanics 99
ENGI 1030 Engineering Graphics & Design 99
ENGI 1020 Introduction to Programming 99
ENGI 1040 Mechanisms & Electric Circuits 99
PHYS 1051 Gen Phys II:Osc,Waves,Electrom 99
A 10 **********
B 1 *
Subj N Min Avg Max
---- -- --- ----- ---
* 11 99% 99.0% 99%
ENGI 4 99% 99.0% 99%
MATH 3 79% 92.3% 99%
PHYS 2 99% 99.0% 99%
CHEM 1 99% 99.0% 99%
ENGL 1 99% 99.0% 99%
These operations are idempotent, i.e., it is safe to import a class list or transcript multiple times.
The class list command can be used to display selected pieces of information
about each student, possibly sorted according to a number of sort fields:
$ class list
abc123 201600001 Alice B Cool abc123@mun.ca Group 1
[...]
$ class list username name level group --sort-by group --reverse
Alice B Cool 201600001 abc123 Undergrad
[...]
The class group command can be used to put students into groups
(e.g., lab groups) in a manual or automatic way:
$ class group abc123 def456
1 abc123 Alice B Cool def456 Dwayne E Foghorn
$ class group --auto
2 abc123 Alice B Cool def456 Dwayne E Foghorn
3 pc1234 Peter Capaldi rs1234 River Song
This command can be used to generate configuration files for a Subversion
repository (e.g., authz for access control and htpasswd for hashed
passwords).
It also generates a groups.json file that describes lab groups for the
scripts/svn-affected-users script.
class svn --prefix 2016 --instructors me1234 --tas ta1234,ta5678
Writing 50 groups and 100 students to authz
Writing 50 groups to groups.json
The class mail command can be used to email groups of students, using BCC as
appropriate to hide students' email addresses from each other.
When the --test flag is present, the command simply prints the message
that would be sent:
$ class mail --test --to abc123,def456 --sender me@mun.ca --subject 'ENGI 1234: labs'
This is a message typed directly into the console.
^D
From nobody Thu Sep 8 14:38:08 2016
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Subject: ENGI 3891: test
From: me@mun.ca
To: me@mun.ca
Bcc: abc123@mun.ca, def456@mun.ca
aGkK
$ class mail --test --all --sender me@mun.ca --subject foo message.txt
From nobody Thu Sep 8 14:38:08 2016
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Subject: foo
From: me@mun.ca
To: me@mun.ca
Bcc: abc123@mun.ca, def456@mun.ca, pc1234@mun.ca, rs1234@mun.ca
dGVzdCBtZXNzYWdlCg==
$ echo "test message" | class mail --test --all --sender me@mun.ca --subject foo
From nobody Thu Sep 8 14:38:08 2016
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Subject: foo
From: me@mun.ca
To: me@mun.ca
Bcc: abc123@mun.ca, def456@mun.ca, pc1234@mun.ca, rs1234@mun.ca
dGVzdCBtZXNzYWdlCg==
(note the use of base64 encoding for messages encoded in UTF-8)
When the --test flag is removed, the message is actually sent.
class plot can be used to plot various useful graphs, such as the average of
all students' performance in a prerequisite course.
This command will only plot results that have already been parsed from
transcripts, so it may be useful to run class banner transcript --all first.
$ class plot course MATH 1000
$ class plot subject ENGI
$ class plot eng-one